No. I THE MEMOIRS OF FATHER ROBERT PERSONS
(Concluded) MEMOIR IV PUNTI PER LA MISSIONE D'INGHILTERRA THIS memoir , like those already printed in Vol . II, is incomplete . It has possibly lost the account of the year 1580 (see p . 15n), and ceases with the year 1584. It survives in two copies. The one is at Stonyhurst College, transcribed by Father Christopher Grene in his volume Collectanea P, fols 14-76, and will here be called G. The other is in a Jesuit archive abroad, Anglia Historica, , 187-238 , 442-474, 487-502 , and will be called A. Both are of about equal value . Father Grene's MS. is founded on Persons original, dictated and in part written " by him . A is transcribed by an Italian from this same original, and bears near the end one or two corrections in Persons' hand . Father Grene's knowledge of the subject gives somewhat greater authority to his version of English names, while the Italian scribe gives the Italian language more idiomatically. Father Grene makes trifling omissions here and there of redundant words , and of news which is repeated, but it is only just at the end that these omissions are of importance . He also sometimes makes use of Italian copyists (cf. 1583, $1, n. ), whose spelling, accents and abbreviations were not quite consistent with his own. We have no date of the time when this memoir was composed, nor any note of the writer's object . He speaks, however, of the appointment of Birkhead as archpriest , which will bring down the date to 1608 or thereabouts , and we may also feel sure that it was written for foreigners . This seems probable from the choice of Italian as the language , and from the use of some curious circumlocutions , as English from the parts called Wales, etc. It is also evident that the intended readers were Jesuits, or at least persons chiefly interested in the affairs of that Order . think that I recognize the hand of the well- known Latinist, Father Paul Bombino, at one place in the text A (p . 14n) , and this leads me to conjecture that perhaps the whole was written for him. He wrote his Vita Edmundi Campiani from information provided by Father Persons, and it may be that he at one time intended to continue his history to the years covered by the Punti. The Italian scribe began to number the various paragraphs , while Father Grene distinguished them by marginal headings . have gladly combined both methods of making the memoir easier to follow, and have moreover made Father Grene's marginal headings into sectional headings . have to thank the Very Rev. Father Rector of Stonyhurst College for the loan of the MS. , and the Servite nuns of Our Lady's Priory, Stamford Hill, N., for their care in transcribingthe text. To Miss Stearn and to Father Joseph Rickaby, S.J. , I am much indebted for assistance in translatingthe Italian and Latin respectively . J.H.P.
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